Story, ‘Crazy Wishes’ by Ray Cates

wonderlifebuz — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:28:48 +0000

My name is Bernie and I was always lucky with wishing. Until kindergarden my wishes were about my family. I wished Rhonda my sick sister would get over her cancer. I was what the preacher called a ‘selfish person’, because my parents were basket cases because of the cancer. The cancer was all in her stomach and I was selfish because I didn’t so much care that she was screaming when she wasen’t knocked out with pain shots and pills, but I didn’t like screaming, mostly mother would go off and leave me with Prisilla a lousy baby sitter, who was glued to soap opera TV, and mixed up carrots and potatoes. Then my parents would come back a month later and moan, saying, “She’s dying and there is no hope.”
Well I had had it up to my ears with a lack of hope. So I blurted out one time, “Sure there’s hope!”
“Little ears hear too well.” Mother said to father.
“I get what I wish for, and I don’t wish Rhonda dead!” I said, “and that’s why she won’t die.”
“She’s already lived six months into impossible.” Dad said.
“I know cause I’ve been wishing her alive and you know I get what I wish for,” I said.
“He did get a real gun for Christmas Fred!” Mother said, “try to imagine a five year old with a 22 pistol!”
“Well he wanted it so bad, and he’s been responsible, and we only shoot it on a range.” Dad replied. This was something that mother threw up at him all the time.
“Crazy wishes I say.” Mother said.
“Mickey would have been crippled if it were not for me wishing.” I said, changing a sore subject.
“Oh sure you made Mickey walk again,” Dad said, “the doctors never said, he would never walk again. He just didn’t walk for awhile.”
“Almost a year,” I told him, “and that was only last year,” he knew I remembered.
“So what did you do Bernie to make your older brother walk again after he didn’t?” Mother said.
“Well I began wishing it every night after my prayers. Then one day I was flat fed up with him laying around eating and not playing with me, like he once did, and I rubbed his legs all over and wished it with my eyes closed while I rubbed.”
“Did you pray to God son for Mickey to walk again?” Mother said.
“No I didn’t pray, God has too much to do to care about legs not working right I wished it myself. He began walking after that rub-down. I got almost no credit, but sometimes he plays ball with me now.”
They were quite and said nothing for awhile and I went in the living room and played a video game, MACHINE GUN KILLING FIELDS one of my all time favorites.
I thought it was just one of those times when you tell something important, and parents don’t hear, their ears often don’t reach down for sound of what little people are saying. It’s like, ‘What could the little snot-nose know, all he knows is what we tell him. We never tell him anything, so he’s as dumb as us.’
Well I left my program when I heard them arguing in the next room. I got bored with MACHINE GUN when it got the the place where we shoot the babies that are hiding behind sheep. You have to shoot about 300 animals. I like animals better than babies. Babies scream all night. I’m sorry I ever was one.
So I listened at the door, while they thought I was shooting sheep. The machine guns have a good rock and roll beat. I learned dad was on my side, “Damn it Monica you’ve trapsied all over for treatments, and you don’t realize Bernie may be right.”
“He’s just a little boy with a vivid imagination and expressing his very bizarre fantisies.” Mother said.
“Bernie never worked you over like he did me. God I had to get him a fucking gun, and it had to be a real fucking gun!”
“Terrible stupidity! Mostly your a responsible person, but that was totally crazy. The doctors would lock you up Fred if we told them, ‘Oh yes he bought a five year old a real gun’.”
“Those people you took Rhonda to in Mexico City were real witch doctors and rubbed roots that chickens had shit on around on Rhonda’s stomach. That was also fuckin crazy. I think that venture cost us 4,000 credits? They don’t pay for witch doctors and shit rubbing on our medical policy. The same doctors who would certify me crazy about the gun, would list you as bonkers for your Mexican shit venture. They would call it ‘child endangerment’ dear.”
“I’ve tried everything!” she said. She had that flat, morneful sound like when our dog Gramy was about dead, and could barely drag herself around on two front legs. It sounded like that a almost finished dog on it’s last legs.
“Look I couldn’t eat, or work, and my dick was limp until after I bought that fuckin gun.”
“What your saying is too scary to believe, it’s downright horrifying and creepy.” Mother said, and then they talked too low for me to hear before, they came in and let me help.
My parents didn’t talk to me about it, just took me into Rhonda’s room with her asleep. She was pain-patched, and pilled out cold. She didn’t even see me to know that it was me that got her stomach well. I rubbed her stomach for 30 minutes, but I think now that it would have only been necessary to touch her a bit.
The doctors took credit for getting her well, they forgot she was ‘hopeless’. She just got all well and I did it! My mother and father knew I did it — but they were in denial of that totally true fact. My parents were standing with their eyes wide open all the time, as I worked on my sister, but saw nothing I did. Parents are blind!
It was a family secret about, ‘Lucky Bernie’, until kindergarden and John.
I was the next to smallest boy in our class. The smallest kid was Mick. Mick was a kid dwarf. I was twice as big as Mick, but not quite half as big and strong as John.
John didn’t look five. the teachers didn’t even think he was five. His arms were bigger like his legs, and John beat up Mick in the bathroom every day. No one defended Mick and all the teachers were women so we had to go in the bathroom every day without any adult. The firm rule was girls were not supposed to watch boys piss and shit, and we were barred from going in an watching girls do it. I really never wanted to see girls piss and shit, except that it wasn’t allowed, so something must be good about it. There must be something they were hiding.
So once Mick got both his ears blacked and his nose busted, and he wouldn’t tell who did it. It was a tattler-tale to let the teacher know you got beat up in the bathroom. We didn’t want to, ‘Go to teacher and tell’, little girls were known to do that, not growing men. I told nothing, and Mick got beat every day. I saw it, and may have even laughed with the others, glad it was him and not me. In kindergarden kids are at the mercy of the bigger kid.
Well Mick became me. His parents took little Mick out of kindergarden. I was next in line, as next smallest. At first John would trip me in the hall, or when I walked by his desk. He was a total ass-hole. I hated him.
In the bathroom I became Mick, but I fought back and went home black and blue. The best I could do, I did, and that was tear his shirt. John was poor and his mother fixed the torn shirt and he went to school patched. That was my small victory at first.
It was required that every kid had to be toilet trained to be in kindergarden. Well you had to be retarded to be in five year old kindergarden and still piss and shit your pants. So I wished away John’s control. I had learned with Mickey and Rhonda that I needed to somehow touch the person, some kind of way, to affect them. So in the bathroom I had my dickey out at the pee wall pan and John kicked my leg. Thinking I would pee on myself, but I turned and peed on him. Well that was a really dirty water way to reach out and touch him. He really beat me up then, all around my head. But his pants were wet and he had to go back to class with peed pants.
I was so beat up that the principal called my parents and they took me home. I wished so hard that John shit his pants before I left for home. Wow that stunk up the place. I mean he emptied out! It was great! When he go up to be excused for the bathroom the shit ran down his legs, and messed up the shiny floor. John was like the slimy bugs that scoot across a flat surface and leave their train of slime.
I knew I would be going back to school and John would be there in a diaper. They would not kick him out of school for a shit medical problem. John would be in school in his diapers, and I would still be small. Even if I told teachers, like a little girl, he would still constantly beat me. He might even figure that I caused it.
In the car going home I wished John, Rhonda’s cancer and Mickey’s non working legs. I closed my eyes and wished as I put mother’s klenex against my bleeding nose.
John came to school for awhile, but he would have to be pushed out early to go home in his wheelchair, because of his stomach cancer screaming. When I was near his wheelchair I always gave it a little shove. Of course when no one was watching, like in the bathroom, when he was trying to transfer to the toilet seat.

About Ray Cates

wonderlifebuz — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:43:46 +0000

Ray Cates is a teacher and writer in Ocala Florida. He often teaches in college: law, business courses and English.

He owns Oceans High School which helps students get their diploma at their own home. See http://oceanshighschool.com

A story that has links to other stories is at: http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com

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Story, ‘Crazy Wishes’ by Ray Cates

About Ray Cates